Callum: Evaluation: Ancillary Tasks

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

First, I'll answer in regards to the DPS.

The DPS magazine feature is linked to the overall product in a number of ways.  For one, there's the very prominent featuring of our female co-host Amber Rickell in both the article's text and the image on the "second page".  On the downside, this implies name recognition on Amber's part, which simply isn't true.  On the upside, this could be used in conjunction with the documentary as a launch pad for a future career for her.  The usage of the Dual Shock 2 in the image, in addition to all manner of gaming terminology and references laying about the article ties us back into the gaming theme.

In addition, on more subliminal levels, the DPS ties back into our main product in other ways.  Amber is wearing the same jacket that she does for most of her time on screen in the documentary.  Her hair, whilst longer, is in the same style as in the documentary.  General colour schemes in the photo and the documentary are the same; including the return of relatively white backgrounds with hosts situated in front of them.  A bright red text colour replaces the yellow from the documentary, but here it's because yellow would be hard to see against the page colour, more than anything else.

I have had questions in regards to the register and the presentation.  Criticism has come in as to the tone; is it truly suitable for the target audience age-group that we are going for?  I would respond in the affirmative to that question.  The DPS style is meant to ape that of the Radio Times magazine; from the way the programme's information is presented, to keeping the pull quote on "Page 2" to the relative tidiness of the layout.  The register is still relatively formal but has a conversational tone to it that makes the reader feel involved without talking down to them.  This is rather similar to the tone of our documentary, again tying the ancillary back into our main product.

There are plenty of references to videogames in the article (even a full side bar on the retirement of the PlayStation 2) and there's a couple of paragraphs specifically about the treatment of females in videogames; linking back to the specific episode of our documentary that we made.  For example, Amber's extended speech about Lara Croft and the, at the time, upcoming Tomb Raider game mirror the usage of a clip from that Tomb Raider in the episode that we made.  Overall, the ancillary DPS links in with the main product well enough that it's hard to see it as being about anything else.

Now, the newspaper advertisement.

This ancillary is almost impossible to not link to the main product if you actually read it.  The details of the main product are clearly displayed and are very hard to miss (the title of the product, name of the episode, air time and channel), the register contains the information about the episode in question (even name-checking the hosts) and there are a pair of stills from the programme that are clearly from the show featured in question; as evidenced by the slightly grainy and muddy images, the fact that both images feature our hosts and one has an image of Clementine from The Walking Dead in it.  There are a lack of obvious videogame connotations in the images (images of characters like, say, Lara Croft or somebody holding a piece of gaming equipment), however, meaning that the reader has to actually read the text featured in the advert to get that the programme featured is about videogames.

It's in the style of The Independent's TV Guide section in each of their daily papers.  This is an audience that is definitely older and more sophisticated than what we are aiming for with our Target Audience (18 to 24 year old males, mostly), but it's still useful.  Yes; a strong periphery demographic is not our target audience, but they're still extra viewers at the end of the day and, in some extreme cases, can actually help bolster a product in addition to its TA.  So, consequently, aiming to try and gain some people from our periphery demo is a worthwhile investment that could pay off.

Evaluation: Section 1, Director's Commentary

In response to the question: "How does your documentary adhere to or challenge codes and conventions of the genre?"

Kyle: Ancillary Task - Newspaper Advertisement: Final Draft,

Here is the final draft of the newspaper advertisement:

Both: Target Audience Feedback Method

To get appropriate feedback from our target audience, we will be using a number of different techniques. We will be using questionnaires based on an earlier post (linked here ), as well as uploading a smaller copy of the video to YouTube and Facebook, to allow a wider spread of audience feedback to return to us, thus benefiting further our evaluation.

Callum: Ancillary Task: TV Guide Double Page Spread - Final Draft

Attached below is a JPEG version of my completed Double Page Spread feature for a TV guide magazine.

Kyle: Ancillary Task - Newspaper Advertisement: First Draft

We have completed the first draft of the newspaper advertisement as part of our auxillary task:

For the images, our original intention was to use a separate photo shoot to provide the images necessary. However, we re-thought our strategy, and instead decided to use a series of stills from our documentary as potential options to include on our advertisement. This may differ in future drafts, and may do so on the final product.

Callum: Auxiliary Task Research: TV Guide Features

Without prior exposure to the public, nobody will come and watch our documentary series.  That is just a simple fact.  Consequently, we must find various outlets of which to give our documentary series some exposure.  One particular way we can do this is by getting featured in a TV listings magazine (or a magazine that talks about TV in some way, shape or form) as a double page spread.  This way, it makes the publications seem like they are endorsing us and our programme and it gives us some extra viewers who may not have been previously interested in our documentary but are persuaded to give it a try thanks to the glowing review.

Before we commit to this, however, we need to see what TV guides are out there, so that we can see which is best for us, if we were to be featured.

TV Times
The TV Times layout one of informality and clearly for an older audience.  Much older than our intended audience.  As such, it's a got simple yet busy layout.  There's one big Medium Close-Up (heavily photoshopped) of the interviewee that takes up almost all of first page, with the body text being kept on the second page.  Thanks to this, it's clear where the article starts and the cheery face of the interviewee implies a positivity to the piece.

The colour scheme, too, is bright, breezy and inoffensive; perfect for the target audience that they're shooting for.  Purple, red, white and a very light blue; comfort colours.  Body text is black, keeping it traditional, whilst subheadings (which are related to the initial topic of the section) are in purple for easy notice and distinction.  The body text is written in a white box overlaid on top of the image taken for the piece; both for a clear distinction between photo and story and to make it easier to read instead of putting the black text on any colour background that would have made the black blend in.

Furthermore, there are pretty much always (I checked more features in addition to the one that I am analysing) three extra pictures are placed around the feature, in addition to the main one.  There's a screen-cap or still from the programme in question, a picture of the interviewee in a personal/private moment (to make them seem just like you and me) and a third picture of the interviewee with a barely relevant context (here, it's Claire Balding holding her book).  Pull quotes are stationed next to pictures of the interviewee and are generally comedic and light in tone.

Overall, whilst nice and comforting, TV Times are not the TV guide listings that we should be aiming for.  Without wishing to sound ageist, their target audience is far too old to both be part of our key demographic and to truly enjoy the documentary that we are aiming for, anyway.

Radio Times
Similarly to TV Times, one of the two pages of this DPS is dedicated to a photo of the interviewee (wide-angle mid-shot); this one far less photoshopped than before.  But that's about where the similarities end.  Radio Times adopts a far more professional look than TV Times, toning the colour down to simple white background (dark grey for the background of the photoshoot) and black text.  Any splashes of colour (such as the red heading for the NTA tangent, complete with a light blue background) are to denote tangents to the main piece or are part of the photo.  There is, in fact, only one photo on the whole spread and no sub-headings.  To off-set this, the text is much more evenly-spaced and clearer to follow than in TV Times.  Finally, the pull quotes are rather serious in nature and are very much related to the topic of the piece.

However, this whole professional veneer pretty much completely disappears the second that you start reading the actual text.  The style is highly informal and very conversational and very lighthearted.  "Here, dear reader, the Mary Berry we all know and love, who only very gently tells people that they have soggy bottoms or too much raising agent, changes completely."  It makes it very readable and keeps the whole magazine interesting to the reader even if it's a story about something that they had no prior interest in.

So, taking everything into account, we should pursue Radio Times for a DPS feature.  Their professional layout makes it seem much more high-end than TV Times but their highly informal writing style keeps it accessible to a younger and slightly-lower class audience than the presentation would suggest.  A lot of these people are in our key demo; we should definitely try to snap them up.

The Sunday Times: Culture
This TV guide is very unlike any of the others.  For a start, it's layout is incredibly sparse and not particularly pleasing to the eye.  There is one photo in the DPS (a wide-angle, medium close-up) but it is massive and takes almost all of the middle of the DPS from the top to about 3cm from the bottom.  It has been digitally altered to match the show that the feature is about, but other than that the DPS is text. Text, text and more text.  Small sized and closely spaced together text.

There are no subheadings and only one dropped capital letter at the start of an article.  Once you start reading, you are almost entirely on your own in regards to navigating the article if you stop reading at any point.  The pull quote, such as you can call it that, is extremely short and very small, stapled onto the right hand side of the image in about the same size as the rest of the text of the article.  As for the register, there is no humour here that's not from the interviewee and no personality in the text surrounding him.  It is very dry and extremely professional.  It's clearly for a very high-class audience, one that appreciates not being "talked down to", but is absolutely not for our target demographic.  Unless our target demo has suddenly switched to upper-class rich people who live in mansions in the countryside.

I think it's safe to say that we won't be using The Sunday Times: Culture when we start courting DPS feature requests.  It is absolutely not for our target audience and the people who read it are extremely unlikely to be persuaded to watch our documentary.  They're most likely to be turned off by our entire premise, more than anything else.